


I had been hungry, all the Years

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Eating, F/M, Gen, Medical Procedures, Nursing, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 14:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6473839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed gets some assistance from Samuel, then sees Mary needs some help as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I had been hungry, all the Years

**Author's Note:**

> I supposed I could have called this "Comfort Me With Apples" but I am loath to give up my Dickinson now. I am not sure that the medical treatment is historically accurate, but it's a fair approximation of what I recall from medical school and my (admittedly brief!) wiki-search didn't give me a lot of help. Let's just agree that Jed is advanced and maybe he learned it on the Continent. I do not suggest looking it up unless you have a strong stomach!

For a change, it was not brutally hot. The wards were full of light but the air was balmy and gazing in the right direction, you could remember that this room had been the hotel’s reception room, and that the ladies’ blue parlor. Jed, unfortunately, was looking in the direction of a wound dehiscing, the flesh buckling across the thigh of a corporal from Ohio. Jed grimaced; it wasn’t life-threatening at the moment, not as it would be if it were the man’s belly, but it needed quick and skillful attention and at least four hands to manage it. The corporal himself was dozing lightly but Jed knew him to be uncomplaining and wished heartily to finish the task before him causing the man the least distress. He looked about for assistance. Naturally, even on a relatively calm day, no recent battle swelling their ranks, there was no one helpful about. He saw two nuns across the hall, habits like shadows with their little white faces peering out. Hale was operating, if you could call it that, with Nurse Hastings at his side, likely alternating simpers with impatient instructions which were generally better practice than whatever Hale planned. The man was barely more than a butcher and grueling repetition hadn’t improved his limited skills. Jed looked back to the corporal’s leg, trying to decide if he could manage alone. It did not look promising and he wondered whether the basket of bandages next to him would be enough to pack the wound. Christ! He wished that Mary would somehow be there at his side when he looked up from the wound. He knew better—she’d gone down the hall and was making her way through a roomful of soldiers all wanting a letter read, a brow wiped, a cup held in two soft white hands.

Jed felt the string of curses lining up inside his mind, ready to burst from his lips, when he glanced across the room at Mary’s little makeshift kitchen and saw Samuel Diggs there, busy with some mess. He realized Samuel been there for some time, a blurred figure in the dim closet she’d commandeered. He took a deep breath, preparing to bellow out across the room when he realized his first instinct was to call out, “You, boy!” He swallowed it, but not the flash of shame that came with it. He could imagine the look in Mary’s eyes had she heard him and realized he had not left his Maryland plantation as far behind as he’d thought. Still, he had need of Samuel’s help and had found him to be reliable, diligent, quick-witted and dexterous, far and away the best assistant in the hospital given his experience in medical work.

“Samuel Diggs! I need you here! Leave off whatever you are doing and hurry!” Jed saw that his shouts had barely roused the corporal and that in even the brief time he’d searched for another, the man had become feverish. It was not too late, he guessed.

“Dr. Foster?” Samuel was unfailingly polite and deferential. Jed wondered for the briefest moment, what if must be like to have so many gifts and be unable to use them.

“As you can see, Corporal Becket’s wound is dehiscing—you know what that means?”

“It won’t heal, well, it won’t heal up properly.”

“Yes, and if we don’t reopen the wound, it’s likely to brew some infection. Then, it’ll be days, if not hours, before this soldier dies. I need your help to open and clean the wound, then pack it with these bandages. At least then, he’ll have a chance. He’s young, his color is good and his lungs clear-- he could survive it.” Jed spoke more optimistically than he felt, but his own firm tone of voice buoyed him. Perhaps it was true.

He and Samuel worked together smoothly. It seemed at times that Samuel anticipated him, was thinking several steps ahead beyond the course Jed had imagined. Jed knew Mary wished Samuel to be better trained so that in the future, he could become a physician for freemen and contraband in the city. Frankly, Jed felt Samuel would be better off moving back to a Northern city to tend to freemen, or even further west where the customs of slavery were somewhat less entrenched. He could appreciate Mary’s wisdom though, as the idea of Samuel being only a serving boy seemed the most colossal waste of a mind he’d lately come across. He looked over the soldier’s body and saw Samuel was watching him, impassive but not hostile, not even curious. It was the pure observation of a scientist. It would have taken Jed years to learn to school his own expression thus, but he sensed that Samuel had mastered the lesson early on, perhaps before he’d left his mother’s breast.

“Well, that’s done then. We’ll have to check the wound in a few hours. Let’s hope this poor soldier sleeps a while. If he wakes, we’ll have to give him some morphine to deal with the pain.” Jed paused. He recalled Samuel had been hard at work an hour ago and had made no complaint when Jed had issued his demands. 

“Samuel, what were you doing before?” he asked.

“Trying to put something together for Nurse Mary, Dr. Foster.”

“Put something together? What do you mean? What did she ask you to collect from the kitchen that could have been taking you so long—I saw you over there for at least a quarter of an hour.” Jed was genuinely puzzled as Samuel could not be said to have ever shirked a duty or dawdled at a request.

“Nurse Mary didn’t ask me to collect anything. It’s just, I try to put together something for her to eat, since she doesn’t take meals regularly.”

“Whatever do you mean? She doesn’t eat?” Jed exclaimed.

“Well, she does, Dr. Foster, she does if everyone else is attended to and content, if there’s no one calling for her, but that isn’t too often, you know. She’s more likely to hand over whatever she’s got to eat for someone else anyway.” Samuel was matter-of-fact, clearly familiar with Mary’s ways. “I think she eats her dinner pretty regular, and I know she likes a cup of tea at night if we have it.”

“What were you making for her then? You are a cook as well?” Jed wished the comment had not sounded so critical but the words were beyond recall.

“Dr. Foster, I just put together a little meal, some fruit and a biscuit, maybe a little cheese if we have it to hand. Something small she can tuck in her pocket for she certainly doesn’t sit to eat it.” Samuel made a sound a little like a sigh, the sound that would have been a sigh if he’d allowed himself. “The doctors have the small dining room and the nuns use the back study for their meals and prayers. Nurse Hastings seems to take all her meals with Dr. Hale or Dr. Summers. Nurse Mary doesn’t. She’s just at her work all the time and,” here a deep breath, “perhaps it’s not my place, being just a freeman and a servant, but I worry about her. Maybe you’ve noticed?” Samuel looked at him, inquiringly, hopefully, suggesting Jed was another one who’d kept a close eye on Mary since she arrived.

As Jed turned his mind to the memory of it, he realized he agreed with Samuel. Mary had arrived at Mansion House, eyes wide and cheeks peony pink, with her traveling suit and smart blue bonnet and trig carpet-bag always about. He thought of her today as he’d seen her, smudges under her eyes, cheeks less blooming. She carried a hollowness about her that she drove out with her smiles at the boys or her bustle about the hospital but it was there, the emptiness after hunger. Her dresses and long skirts concealed any greater change but he wondered if her corset hung more loosely about her rib-cage, if her hip bones curved a little too sharply toward her petticoats. He considered her endless small kindnesses to him, not least of which was making sure he always had a hot meal and a cool drink at night, a cup of what passed for their best coffee in what passed for their best china every morning. And then he thought of her head, bowed down by the coiled braids at her nape, nodding on a bench after evening had become full night and how there was no one to take her by the hand and lead her to a soft bed. 

“Samuel, I propose we do something about this. But I think Nurse Mary needs more than a biscuit to tuck in her pocket. Let us go downstairs and put a real meal together for her.” He would beard Bullen in his den for this if he had to. Samuel joined him readily, Jonathan to his David.

They made there way to the true kitchen and larder. Miraculously, Bullen was not about and they made quick work of assembling a tray with thick slices of country ham, some biscuits spread with cherry preserves, an apple and a wedge of cheese. Jed clattered some cutlery onto to the tray, jostled a little clay pitcher of water and the first mug he could find without a chipped lip. He spied a clean cloth with a fine blue stripe near the seam and nodded to Samuel. 

“Take this to the upstairs study, the one she uses sometimes to meet with visiting ladies. We can lay this on the table. I’ll retrieve her.” Samuel gave him a small smile, possibly the smallest smile Jed had ever seen, but it was reflected in his dark eyes and Jed saw approbation there as well. Jed was surprised how pleased he was to achieve merit in Samuel’s eyes but it dropped like a gold coin in the bag, solid and true.

“Nurse Mary, Nurse Mary,” he called as he walked the wards. “There is something you must see to.” He found her sitting between two young boys, alternating turning to offer water and working on a letter to dear Mamma and the folks at home. She set both aside, a little less gracefully than usual, and he held her wrist as she rose to stand. He had no point of comparison for her, but her wrist felt thin, pulse too prominent. This close to her, he could see the lavender blue under her eyes and the pallor of her cheeks. She should not have been so lovely when she looked so nearly ill.

“Yes, Dr. Foster, I am coming.” He was pleased he had gotten her to agree so easily to leave the boys but congratulated himself on phrasing it as a task she needed to attend to. She would hardly have left for any other reason, while he was sure Nurse Hastings would have immediately fled after citing an excuse about something obscurely needful or a decoction only she could temper, a witch at her cauldron. Mary walked beside him, her calico blouse a field of sere flowers, a tatted lace collar slightly loose at her neck.

“What is this, Dr. Foster?” Mary asked blankly as they walked into the room with its large windows and inlaid floor. Jed was very pleased. Samuel had laid the tray with the blue-striped cloth beneath, a homely but attractive arrangement. He’d somehow found a minute to place a nearly blown rose in a little porcelain dish and the cutlery had been placed, entirely properly, beside the full plate.

“This is your meal, Mary. If you will not eat at the appointed time, I will have to go to this trouble.” Jed smiled at her but she still stood, reluctant. He felt the rejection collect behind her lips.

“Jedediah, there is not time for this. I have work to do.” She turned slightly on her heel as if to walk out but stopped when he pulled out the carved walnut chair for her. “Come now, you must take some nourishment beyond virtue and air. Is this not fine enough for a member of the aristocracy? Can you not sit with a plain country doctor, Duchess?” He tried to keep his tone to a gentle tease, to make sure she knew he mocked them both and only a little. He tried again, knowing this was how Mary was, stubborn about what she deemed important but never numbering herself on the her list.

“Please, Mary, you need to eat, real food at a real table. You know we keep no ward for women here if you get sick,” he said jocularly, but abruptly changed his tone of voice when he saw her beginning to refuse again. He realized nothing but honesty would suffice, even if it were hard for her to hear. This time, he used only the truest voice he had, let the tender emotion he had for her suffuse every word. It was the voice he thought to use when he considered asking to take her hands in his, to hold her sweet face as he kissed her, a first time and so many times after that.

“Mary, Mary, please. You will make yourself ill if you keep this up. You are making yourself ill and I won’t have it.” At this, she looked at him and he could see the instant she accepted it. That instant was enough to make him bold, bold enough to place his hand on her slender arm as she sat, a touch just shy of the caress he wished to bestow. For today, it was sufficient to watch her finish all the food on the plate and see the color rise in her cheeks, lips softer than the dusky rose at her side. He was startled at the pleasure it brought him to see her eat and drink, to accept half a biscuit and watch as she dabbed cherry preserves from her mouth after too-eager a bite. He kept his expression serious as he demurred, then took the slice of cheese and apple she offered, then let it relax into the smile he felt when she raised an eyebrow at him as if it say, “Truly, Jedediah?” He knew he would not get her to linger over the meal, that she would not sit to talk with him of matters serious or otherwise, not today at any rate. He had hopes though of some other time, hopes he didn’t think entirely foolish to nurture. She thanked him, then left the room for her endless service to the Cause, but her steps were quick as a waltz and she let her skirts swirl just a little provocatively as she crossed the threshold.

* * * * * * * * * *

At eleven o’clock, the ward was as quiet as it ever got and the room was dark except for the starlight and a small lamp by his side; there was no moon tonight. Jed checked the corporal’s wound and could see no sign of pus along the edge, no crimson streaks entangling the limb. The man was warm but the fever was light and his breathing was steady. There was a scent of lavender and a little plume of chamomile rushed towards him. Jed felt Mary’s hand upon his shoulder as she set the cup of tea down beside him, the little stroke she gave before she lifted her hand from him and glided away through the aisle between the rows of beds toward the rest of the night.


End file.
